- Vi and Airtel have hiked the prices of their prepaid recharge plans by up to 25 percent.
- Jio hasn’t announced a price revision of its prepaid recharge plans yet.
- It’s possible that Jio might wait for a while before it announces a price hike in the country and expand its 4G user base even further.
Vodafone idea (Vi) and Airtel have hiked the prices of their prepaid recharge plans in India in an attempt to increase the ARPU (average revenue per user) and to offer superior network quality. Airtel said that it revised the prepaid plans to get a reasonable return on capital for a financially healthy business model. Both networks have hiked the price by up to 25 percent in the country, which is a bit steep considering how price-sensitive India can be. One network that hasn’t revised the prepaid plans yet is Reliance Jio. However, Jio doesn’t need need to hike prices like Airtel and Vi considering it already makes huge profits, though its average revenue per user and active subscriber percentage is lower than Airtel.
Now that both Airtel and Vi, which are Jio’s top rivals in India, have hiked their recharge plan prices in India, it’s a solid opportunity for Jio to expand its 4G user base even further, although, it will be losing a large chunk of profits by not increasing its prepaid recharge plans. It’s possible that Jio might wait for a while before it announces a price hike in the country. Once the Airtel and Vi plan becomes effective after November 26th, Jio’s plans will be much more attractive for customers since they offer similar benefits at a 25 percent lesser price. While Airtel and Vi would be able to increase their ARPU, Jio would have more subscribers.
Jio should have no issue onboarding new customers, mostly because its prices would be cheap, and also it has invested heavily in deploying additional spectrum across the nation. The base plan of Airtel and Vi – Rs 79 plan, which offers up to 300MB data and talktime – will soon change to Rs 99. Even then, the plan won’t offer any additional benefits like SMS. Airtel and Vi’s popular plan with 1.5GB daily data, 84 days validity, and unlimited calls costs Rs 719. However, Jio is offering a similar plan at Rs 555. The difference is significant and should be enough reason for them to port out of Airtel and Vi to Jio, whose main goal seems to be adding more 4G users. Jio has a golden chance here to secure more users and worry about ARPU at a later date.
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This will also help Jio to have a good amount of subscriber base ready when the 5G network rolls out sometime in the next couple of years. However, this is just an opinion and there are chances that Jio might make a surprising price hike announcement any day. We will update with full details if and when Jio revises its prepaid recharge plan prices.
